More California Jail Inmates Die After Prison ‘Realignment’

Three people who walked into the overcrowded Fresno County, Ca., Jail left on gurneys, dead or barely alive. Their fates set the stage for the deadliest year in at least two decades at the jail, a sprawling complex of jam-packed cells, report the Sacramento Bee and ProPublica. Eleven inmates died last year from drug and alcohol withdrawal, suicide, medical complications and murder. Thirteen other people were beaten and hospitalized for multiple days. The increase in violence and death in Fresno started soon after the state was ordered in 2011 by the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce its prison population. That’s when California officials approved sweeping reforms called “realignment,” shifting responsibility for thousands of offenders from state prisons to county jails.

While decreasing the overload in state prisons, the results in many county jails have been deadly. Many county jails have struggled to handle the influx of violent and mentally ill inmates incarcerated for longer sentences than ever before. As a result, inmates are dying in markedly higher numbers. No other jail in California has seen a sharper increase in inmate deaths than the Fresno County Jail, whose three buildings house more than 3,000 inmates. In the seven years before the 2011 realignment, 23 inmates died in jail custody, data from the California Department of Justice shows. That figure more than doubled to 47 deaths during the seven years after the state shifted more responsibility to the county jails. Only one Fresno County inmate killed another in the seven years before realignment. Since then, four have died at the hands of other inmates. The problem is particularly acute in places like Fresno, Kern and Merced counties, inland stretches of California, where deaths have surged disproportionately. These less affluent counties in California’s Central Valley watched inmate homicides triple.

TCR's WEEKLY Criminal Justice Newsletter is FREE! Subscribe Here

Read Next

During the pandemic, many advocates and people who have family members incarcerated have been making sure that elected officials hear their voices — and their car horns. A procession organized in New Jersey Thursday honored those who died behind bars.

Americans are asking if there are better ways of running our justice system, but without the numbers to answer fundamental questions, reformers are operating in the dark, write two specialists in criminological research.

A lawsuit charges that the Trump administration violated protesters' First Amendment rights in Washington, D.C. The president approvingly tweets a letter from his former lawyer calling the demonstrators "terrorists."

The partial shutdown of immigration courts during the COVID-19 health crisis has derailed final hearings for tens of thousands of individuals, and is likely to postpone the decisions about the fate of many more for months, if not years, while they wait in detention, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

×

Thanks for reading The Crime Report! You have free article(s) remaining. Subscribe for unlimited access.